Ear Fatigue-No Breaks In Pop Songs

The easy solution is not to play that crap…Pitbull yuck!

Terry_42, post: 25079, member: 1843 wrote: D-Jam it would be really cool from your point of view, as someone who has been into music for a longer time and followed the changes, to elaborate these thoughts a little more. Possibly in its own article? (Or maybe you did and I did not find it hehe)

You want something like how music has changed or been commoditized?

http://www.nature.com/srep/2012/120726/srep00521/full/srep00521.html

Here’s scientific proof that pop songs actually are becoming a) louder and b) less varied. Not the easiest read, but some interesting observations in there.

“We found evidence of a progressive homogenization of the musical discourse,” team leader Joan Serra, an artificial intelligence specialist, told Reuters. “In particular, we obtained numerical indicators that the diversity of transitions between note combinations – roughly speaking chords plus melodies – has consistently diminished in the last 50 years.”
To study pop music’s development — or lack thereof — Serra and his crew turned to the Million Song Dataset — “a freely-available collection of audio features and metadata for a million contemporary popular music tracks.”

Also interesting in that context:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war

I have a slightly different take on it. I wonder if this ADHD trend is caused by people just “skimming” their information in general, facebook, emails, blogs, text messages etc. It just seems like the general environment we live in penalizes paying attention to anything because A) we might be missing out on something else, and B) we’re just overwhelmed.

DJing might be a victim of this, like all forms of craftsmanship. I don’t like this, but that’s the reality. I try to actually read and listen to things, but I wonder if that’s because my media consumption habits were formed in the pre-internet era. Even so, I probably skim a lot more than I used to.

But I’ve noticed that pop/dance structures were changing long before the internet. I used to be a Hip-Hop DJ then got into EDM. When I went back to mix my hip-hop records after years of EDM, the 8 & 16 bar intros seemed incredibly short after 32/64/+ bar intros I’d gotten used to in EDM. I saw this less about commercialization than producing mixes to be DJ friendly: EDM DJs prefer long blends, and Hip-Hop DJs prefer rapid cuts.

With things being digital, it wouldn’t be surprising if the intros and breaks got really shortened again. I don’t follow current pop music because I can listen to really good online radio. I don’t know if that’s because I’m old or love music enough to go beyond skimming. My 19 yr old cousin liked my DJ mixes, but said they were “old school” I wonder if it was because of the long blends.

Terry_42, post: 25106, member: 1843 wrote: Well I followed the changes in music myself quite a bit, but almost 90% of my production work has been with underground and independent musicians, bands and labels, who do their own thing anyways. So more insight on the music being commoditized would be helpful for me to understand more about why Pop / Commercial-EDM is becoming so “break free” and iconized.

I mean in the Eurodance 90s we had acts that were “hated” by the underground like “DJ Bobo”. But I got to meet the guy once then, he was very humble, totally cool guy and he actually had a theme for all his albums (except the first one) with a stage show to go with, huge choreography etc. but still he was trying new things, he had breaks, passages and even un-dancable tracks on his albums. Yes he had also the usual dance hit for the single on each album, but some things were underrated by the haters.
Several of todays acts now go into really 100% me all the time mode for a whole album. Some songs I even like the melody or basic tune (even some FloRida and Pitbull tunes), but they destroy it by “machine gunning” the song to death. Hell even Skrillex has breaks in his songs… but they don’t.
Is it really the impatience of the people, that they cannot even enjoy a whole song? Do they expect that people anyways listen only to 2 songs per album and that is it? Is this probably why I get the feeling when I go to our cool Opera house in town to see an Opera that I think 90% of the people are only there to “be seen and to see who is there” and actually feel relief during the break? (Yes I know wrong forum, but it fits and my music taste is diverse… I can go from industrial to vivaldi in 5 songs when I have an evening of music for myself hehe)

4 Seasons by Vivaldi is a must listen for those in the progressive scene or looking to build a set that aspires to take the listener on a journey! Thumbs up buddy!